David S. Ware Quartet

David S. Ware was born in Plainfield, New Jersey, on November 7, 1949. His early love of music was nurtured by some dedicated teachers at the Scotch Plains-Fanwood High School. He began his saxophone career on alto, and then switched to baritone, before finally settling on the tenor. "I had played in all the school bands, the whole way through junior high and high school : marching band, concert band, dance band and orchestras.

As a teen David was an ardent admirer of Sonny Rollins and struck up a relationship with the elder tenor player after seeing him countless times in the mid-'60s at the Five Spot and the Village Vanguard. The two practiced together intermittently in the '70s in Rollins' Brooklyn apartment; it was Rollins who taught young Ware the art of circular breathing in 1966.

By the late-'60s, David was attending music school in Boston and playing on the local scene with Stanton Davis, Cedric Lawson, Art LandeWhile in Boston, David met drummer Marc Edwards and pianist Gene Ashton (Cooper-Moore), and together they formed a group called Apogee.

David moved to New York in 1973 and became a member of the Cecil Taylor Unit in a group that included Marc Edwards, trumpeter Raphe Malik, and alto saxophonist Jimmy Lyons. He performed with Taylor's legendary Carnegie Hall large ensemble, toured with the Cecil Taylor Unit throughout Europe, the U.S. and Canada, and recorded Dark To Themselves (Enja). Beaver Harris replaced Edwards on drums, which led to David joining Harris' 360 Degree Music Experience ensemble. It was also at this time that David joined Andrew Cyrille's group Maono.

By 1981 he had recorded three albums with Maono, it was also the year that David's first album Birth of a Being was released, a trio date with Marc Edwards and Gene Ashton, for Hat Hut. In the early ?80s, he collaborated with drummer Milford Graves. His trio toured Europe in 1985 with bassist Peter Kowald and either drummer Louis Moholo or Thurman Barker. Later, David served in trumpeter Ahmed Abdullah's Solomonic Quintet which recorded one self titled album on Silkheart.

In 1988 David formed a trio with Marc Edwards and William Parker and recorded Passage To Music for Silkheart. In 1989, he put out the word that he was looking for a pianist. William Parker and Reggie Workman both recommended Matthew Shipp.
In 1989, the David S. Ware Quartet was born. From that time to 2007 the only personnel changes have been the drummers: Whit Dickey replaced Marc Edwards in 1992, followed by Susie Ibarra in 1996, and Guillermo E. Brown in 1999. "I'm seeing more and more the value of keeping a group together," says Ware. "Rather than freelance with different bands, you make the group an institution. Looking at jazz over the decades, I feel this is how the music grows the most. Musicians get a chance to be thorough, to know the material and be involved ?. He also refused to do sideman gigs. "Working with other musicians doesn't work for me. Philosophically, I find it difficult to be under someone else's umbrella."

The '90s saw the full-on actualization of this group and the recognition of David S. Ware as a true saxophone collossus. A series of ground-breaking albums by the David S. Ware Quartet were released: Great Bliss Vols. 1 & 2 on Silkheart; Flight of i, Third Ear Recitation, Earthquation, and Godspelized on the Japanese label DIW; finally, Cryptology, DAO, and Wisdom of Uncertainty on the American labels, Homestead and AUM Fidelity.

In 1997, David was signed to the Columbia Jazz label by Branford Marsalis [...]